Maples Burn Redder
by Feirdra
Summary: They were just another Canadian Beyblading team… Their highest goal was the Canadian Beyblading Nationals. Was that too much to ask? Obstacle after obstacle tear the team apart. Heartbreak, betrayal, and revenge come hand in hand. This is their story.


A/N: This is pure OC. I was getting sick of "proper" fanfiction, and then this came along almost out of nowhere. It's the story of a Canadian Beyblade team called the Autumne Swifts, set in Montreal, Quebec, and the environing islands and cities. R & R.  
  
Dedications - Christina, who inspired me to create the Autumne Swifts. Majestics fans will like her fics. And Olympia Blader and MidnightLoner, who unknowingly helped get this story on the road. And all Canadians. Wave your flag proudly.  
  
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Notes:  
  
"something" - Speech  
  
'something' - Italics (Emphasis)  
  
***  
  
~Maples Burn Redder~  
  
= Prologue: The Story of Us =  
  
___________  
  
White. An empty expanse of pure, softly scintillating smoothness, sculpted with shadows like a flowing landscape of snow.  
  
My name is Senjila Risten. My Mom says I act too old for my age. She jokes that I'm sixteen, going on a hundred. I smile and indulge her.  
  
This paper sits before me in all its crisp perfection, wiping all ideas, thoughts from my mind. I'm as bereft as a lost wanderer in a great desert, where dune after dune after dune rises and falls in unmarked slopes, fine grains rising in clouds in the wind, without limit, without end.  
  
The acerated metal point hovers, gleaming, the long shadow stretching itself away from the bright light of the desk lamp pushing back the shadows, sketching itself sharply, ready to mar the pure, complete whiteness, yet the whiteness itself will lend all the more purity to that single, beginning stroke carving its way across the nothingness. I can't bring myself to do it. Not when I have no idea what I'm doing. And especially not with ink. I lost my corrector fluid weeks ago and I still haven't gotten around to replacing it. My mind is empty, and I have no clue what to write, to tell.  
  
Where to begin?  
  
Begin with the beginning, they say, but really, where is the beginning to all this? Perhaps it began with the start of this continent called America, with the arrival of the Europeans upon it to form that strange melting pot of a people called Americans, or even with the olden wars of the world where the strongest survived, and the strongest were those who wielded bitbeasts. Or perhaps even further back, when the world first began, when a handful or so spirits were separated from their fleshly holds, and roamed freer than any were or have been ever since.  
  
Or maybe, just maybe. . . We were a beginning. I hardly dare hope for it. Everyone, everyone thinks they are the center of the universe, the hero of the story, that all and sundry revolves around them. They forget their place; it's almost amusing that they never realize there are millions of others out there thinking the exact same thing. Probably some internally entrenched tenet of humanity. It's a paradox in itself. It's foolish, yet without it. . . I don't know where we'd be. Overwhelmed by our insignificance, hopeless. . .  
  
I'm not special. I know that with my mind but not my heart. My heart still clings to hope. Matter over mind. I crack myself up. I don't deserve to matter. I have nothing that sets me apart, and everything to gray me out in the pages of time.  
  
But our story. . . I have to tell it. Maybe it doesn't matter in the overall scheme of things. Maybe I'm just an aside to an aside to an aside. . . But. . . I have to, for my team. If I don't deserve to be remembered, they, at least, do. I owe this to them. Especially Engel. I owe him so much. . .  
  
Engel Kiwaru was, and still is, someone that you meet only once in a lifetime. A snowflake, unique in its crystallized pattern; a grain of sand, an unprecedented blend of glittering mineral; a wave in the sea; a shooting star in the sky. When you see it, when you really look at it, you know you've seen something special. I only wish I'd thought to look sooner. He's the keeper of a rather large part of me, and I want it back, if only to quell this ache of yearning that rises in my chest, reaching out to seek in vain, reaching, falling, aching. . .  
  
Hatred is so easy. Too easy, deceptively easy. I only wish Merrilie could have known that too. Like suicide, hate's the easy way out of the fix. I wish I could just hate him and get this over with. But I can't. Not him. Not Engel. Not ever.  
  
So many wishes. . . So many "If only"s and uncertainties, branches to possibility. Wish upon a star. . .  
  
The stars twinkle faintly in the dark sky outside my windows. Bars crossing the glass block my view of the houses across the street, not that it would matter because they're all just the same old shabby complexes with dry withered lawns and tawny flaking paint. Stupid "guillotine" windows, as Jais once called them. Why have windows if they're so badly made you can't even open them without running the risk of losing a couple of fingers? We only moved to this part of NDG because it was close to the Metro station.  
  
I can't see the moon, though its light falls across on my bed, a bright ethereal glow in the darkness when I click off the lamp. The shadows cluster at my shoulders. It feels like I'm marooned on some deserted island, an island of light in an ocean of darkness. All alone. It's peaceful. And cold. So cold. I can hear the crickets chirping their nightly song.  
  
I love poetry, because it's so beautiful and graceful. I hate my poetry because it seeps in and clogs everything up.  
  
Jais isn't here. He's probably going to be out again all night, then in the morning he'll crash here, drunk out of his mind. Mom disapproves of him being here, I can tell, but I can't exactly just dump him after everything we've been through together. Where are you, Jais? Where's your contagious laughter, your jokes, your smile? Wherever you are, you're not the disheveled guy who comes staggering in the door in the pale morning light, stinking of sweat and alcohol. Not that I can blame him, but I really wish I could have the old Jais back, if only to help me tell this thing. Not only, though, if at all possible. Come back, Jais, you're the only one besides me who knows this thing inside and out. The truth. I don't want to lose you, too.  
  
Where was I? Ah, yes, beginnings. Think too much and you lose yourself.  
  
The pen dips onto the paper. I have to write, quickly, before the dark ink stains the paper with an unseemly blot. And so a tilted line forms, the quick and firm nascence of a cursive word, with a surety unfelt.  
  
"All began when. . ." My hand jerks and the pen abruptly leaves off scratching steadily at the paper. Can I really say that? Damn that corrector fluid. . . It's never there when I need it.  
  
It was Beyblading that truly brought us together, but I really can't say the sport started it all, because when we met in that elevator, none of us were really well acquainted with it. Except Engel, I guess, but Engel's always been something else.  
  
Beyblading. . . I'm never going to Beyblade again. That's right. The sport that I, we, pursued with such passion towards the pinnacle of the Canadian Nationals, the sport that the Autumne Swifts took by storm. Beyblading was our air, our food, our drink. It was what we lived for. Was.  
  
My Beyblade is. . . out of sight. Somewhere. I don't exactly make the effort to find it, since I won't be using it anytime soon. I'm sorry, Swallebii. You didn't deserve this.  
  
But when we met in that elevator, so long ago it seems now, lifetimes ago, Beyblading wasn't quite the first thing on our minds.  
  
But that's irrelevant, since I've already established that that's not what I'm looking for. I'm wandering down all the wrong paths tonight.  
  
The beginning. . . My eyes wander to the little origami piece, balanced delicately on two of its four larger points on my desk beside the picture frame. The paper doesn't seem to have suffered the effects of time at all. The little eight-armed star still gleams as though it was folded but yesterday.  
  
Of course. Of 'course'. I've been blind.  
  
All began when. . .  
  
Silver glints as the miniscule metal ball hidden in the hollow of the tip sails smoothly, confidently this time across the whiteness. ". . . when Engel Kiwaru returned to Westmount."  
  
And now. . .  
  
"Let me tell you the story of a friendship that yet binds my heart. Let me tell you of love and hatred, of hope and despair, of searing betrayal and consuming revenge, and, perhaps, redemption. Come with me, hand in hand, and I will guide you down a path strewn with ruined roses, overflowing with the bright faces of dancing carnations, a garden watered with tears and shaded by leaves whispering with the echoes of laughter long faded. This is our past. A small thread in a never-ending tapestry still being woven, perhaps, but it is ours. I will tell you. . ."  
  
My name is Senjila Risten. I am sixteen, going on a hundred.  
  
". . . the story of us."  
  
___________  
  
A/N: Jeez. I've never started a story like this, but it sure feels good. ^- ^ I've already introduced ALL the main characters in this little prologue. If anyone likes it, I might update soon. If nobody likes it, I'll update anyway just for me, whenever I feel like it. So review it or leave it. =P I don't particularly care. 


End file.
